Studies in Comedy, I: Alexis and the Parasite's Name Arnott, W Geoffrey Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies; Summer

1968; 9, 2; ProQuest pg. 161

Studies in Comedy, I:
Alexis and the Parasite's Name
w. Geoffrey Arnott
" T H E PARASITE has a history which goes back to Epicharmus but
as far as we know he only becomes a stock character in the
fourth century." So with his usual pithy acumen writes T. B. L.
Webster.1 But there is a pretty little problem connected with this
standardisation of the parasite 2 as a type figure in fourth-century in-
trigue comedies. Before this standardisation the parasite in real life
and on the comic stage seems to have been called K6>..at. The word
1Tapa.cn'TOS appears not to have been applied to him before the earlier
half of the fourth century.3 What accounts for the rise of the new
name?
The investigation inevitably starts from our main source of informa-
tion about ancient parasite lore: Athenaeus' long and richly enter-

1 See p.64 of Studies in Later Greek Comedy (Manchester 1953)-that vade-mecum of all
students of the history of Greek drama.
I The starting point for modern study of ancient parasites is still O. Ribbeck's magisterial

Kolax. Eine ethologische Studie (AbhLeipzig 9.1 [1883] 1-113). Four other works are of direct
relevance to the topics discussed in this paper: A. Giese, De parasiti persona capita selecta
(Diss. Kiell908); L. Ziehen / Ernst Wiist / A. Hug in RE 18 (1949) 1377-1405 s.w. IIap&.-
a'TO' I PARASITOS; J. M. Brinkhoeff, "De Parasiet op het romeinsche Tooneel," Neophilo-
logus 32 (1948) 127ff; and Webster, op.cit. (supra n.1). Cf also J. o. Lofberg, CP 15 (1920) 61ff
(on the Phormio type of parasite; with a postscript in CW22 [1928-9] 183ft); and V. Ehren-
berg, The People of Ariswphanes (Oxford 1951) 242 (on fifth-century parasites). In the course
of this paper works listed here will be referred to by name of author alone.
8 KOAa, (in the more general sense of 'flatterer') was in common Athenian use from at
least the last quarter of the fifth century B.C. onwards (it appears in Aristophanes, Eupolis,
Crates fr.212 Kock: see LS] and Ribbeck, Iff). 71'ap&.a'To~ was apparently confined in the
fifth and early fourth centuries to its ritual sense; its secondary, more general sense of
'parasite' did not develop until ca. 360-50 (see below). This lexical history is clearly reflected
in a pontification by Phrynichus (Eel. 114, p.139 Lobeck, p.214 Rutherford), 71'apaa[Tov~
O?)I( l>'eyov ot apxCt'io, J71" ov£loovS', wS' vVv, &>.>.0: KO>'CtKCtS'. The relationship between the
corresponding verbs KOAaK€VW and 71'apau'Ttw seems to have been the same; KOACtK€la, how-
ever, did sole duty as the abstract noun throughout the classical period; the form 71'apa-
ULTla does not occur until Lucian. Cf D. B. Durham, The Vocabulary of Menander (Diss.
Princeton 1913) 85; and Starkie's note on Ar. Vesp. 45.
5-G.R.B.S. 161
162 ALEXIS AND THE PARASITE'S NAME

taining chapter (6.234c-262A). One sentence of that chapter runs as

follows (6.235E): 'TOV 8£ vVV Aey6J.LEVOV 7TapaCTLTov Kap";CT'TLO~ 0 JIEpya-
, , ~ \ ~ ~ ,~ • '.l.
f)~ .,
J.L7JVO~ EV 'TqJ 7TEP' OLOaCTKa/UWV EVPE 7JvaL 'f'7JCTLV V7TO 7TPW'TOV
'A'I\E~ LOO~.
I Ii; ~

" ' E7T'XapJ.L0~

, , f) 0J.LEVO~ on
EKl\a I ' , 'E'\I\7TLOL
EV ,~
7J"n"'1\0V'TqJ
, 7Tapa" 7TO'TOV aVTOV
, ,
EZ<n}yaYEv OV'TWCTt Mywv... As Athenaeus here demonstrates,
Carystius' statement, if taken at its face value, is inaccurate. 4 Alexis
did not invent the parasitic genre. The first person to put a
parasite on the comic stage, so far as we and Athenaeus know, was the
Sicilian Epicharmus. It has been suggested that Epicharmus modelled
his character on some figure in the later epic cycle. 5 A more likely
source of inspiration was contemporary life; Epicharmus was writing
at the time of the lavish tyranny in Syracuse in the first half of the
fifth century, where and when opportunities for real-life Ko"AaKEla
were rife. 6 And even in Athens Alexis was not without predecessors.
Athenaeus (6.236E) quotes from Eupolis' Kolakes, produced in 421 B.C.,
a fragment of the parabasis (fr.159 Kock) in which the chorus describe
their ways; and their ways are typical of comic parasites of all periods.
Again, Paphlagon-Kleon in Aristophanes' Knights reveals many traits
of character notoriously parasitic. 7 Admittedly these fifth-century
parasites referred to themselves as K6"AaKES and not as 7TapaCTL'TOL.
Admittedly we can find no trace of the stock figure in fifth-century
Athens drawn as a generalised individual portrait as opposed to a
fantasy chorus on the one hand or to a political caricature on the
other. The seeds, however, from which the fourth-century character
could germinate were already planted.
If Alexis did not invent the parasite, he did not invent the word
7TapaCTL'TO~ either. This word has a history going well back into the
fifth century at least: not, it is true, in the general sense of 'parasite',
but in a technical sense belonging to the sphere of religious ritual. In
this older, ritualistic use the 7TapaCTL'TOS was a temple acolyte who re-
ceived free food and meals in return for services like that of the selec-

'On Carystius see Jacoby in RB 10 (1919) 2254-55 s:v. KARySTlos. He was active in the last
quarter of the second century B.C. His work was probably based on Aristotle's didascalic
lists, but adorned with "literary-historical" discussions (so Jacoby).
6 So Giese, op.cit. (supra n.2) 5fI.
t So E. Wtist, "Epicharmus und die alte attische Komodie," RhM 93 (1950) 359fI.
1 So Ribbeck, op.cit. (supra n.2) 10f. G. Suss, De personarum antiquae comoediae Atticae usu

atque origine (Diss. Giessen 1905) 48fI, and Giese, op.cit. (supra n.2) 11, note that Paphlagon-
Kleon's Ko>.aKEla has some points in common with Theophrastus' description of his Ko>.at;
if. Ribbeck, op.cit. (supra n.2) 54 n.2, 57 n.10.
 w. GEOFFREY ARNOTT 163

tion of the sacred grain for use in particular festivals. We hear of such
7TCtpd.ULToL in the shrine of Heracles at Cynosarges in Attica and else-

where in Greece. A suitable translation of 7TCtpd.ULTO!> in this applica-

tion is <companion of the holy feast', as Polemon suggests in the long
fragment which is our main source of information about the subject,
quoted by Athenaeus (6.234Dff).8
Did Alexis invent anything at all that is relevant to this discussion?
If the words of Carystius have any element of garbled truth, we must
interpret them by assuming that Alexis was the first comic poet to
transfer the word 7TCtpd.aLTo!> from its cloistered world of religious
ritual to its later, more general sense of <parasite'. There is some
evidence to suggest that, if we do make this assumption, we are at last
on the right track. First, however, two ostensible obstacles to our
assumption must be removed. One, an ancient statement which con-
flicts directly with the assumption of Alexis' priority, comes from two
grammarians: Pollux (6.35), saying €7Tt p.lV'TOL TOU 7TCtpCtUtT€'iV. KCtTd:
\ , '" \' """
IUXV€tCtv TJ KOI\CtK€LCtV 7TPWTO!>
'E7TLXCtpJLO!> TOV 7TCtPCtULTOV WVOJLCtU€V,
I , I , I

€rTCt "A'\€gL!>; and the Towneley scholiast on Iliad 17.577, saying T6

c;, ,
D€ "
OVOJLCt TOV~ 1
7TCtpCtaLTDV "
€LpTJTCtL "E"I\7TLOL
€V 1<;:'
7TCtp" E7TLXCtpJLCfJ.
1 E Pl-
.
charmus' Elpis or Ploutos was the play in which his parasite appeared,
but these two allegations that Epicharmus used the term 7TCtpd.Ut'To!>
presumably as a designation of that parasite must be dismissed as a
careless and false inference by Pollux and the scholiast. So judicious
scholars 9 have recognised ever since Isaac Casaubon wrote in his
Animaduersiones in Athenaeum (co1.417), "Ego non dubito lapsum Pol-
lucem incogitantia et a7TpOU€gtq.: quod ei facillimum fuit, Epicharmi
et Alexidis uersus de quibus quaeritur, ob oculos non habenti.
Athenaeus uero qui potuit, cum locum integrum Siculi poetae des-
criberet? Falsum igitur est quod ait Pollux ... Lege uersiculos Epi-
charmi: nus quam in iis nomen 7TCtpd.UL'TO!>; at res eo nomine signifi-
cat a graphice ibi describitur; hoc uoluit Athenaeus cum ait de
Epicharmo, 'T6V 7Tapd.UL'TOV 7Tapd: 7TO'TOV Ela~yaYEv. Ipsum quidem
nomen et Epicharmo fuit incognitum, et iis qui proxime illum sunt
insecuti." The arguments of Casaubon are conclusive enough. A
question may be added to them as a corollary. If the assertion of Pol-
lux and the scholiast were true, why does Athenaeus take such care to
8 On such priestly parasites see Ribbeck, op.cit. (supra n.2) 18ff, and L. Ziehen, RE S.v.

IIapaatTot (supra n.2).

8 E.g. Meineke, PCG 1.377; Wilamowitz in Kaibe1, CGP 1.97 (on fr.36).
164 ALEXIS AND THE PARASITE'S NAME

avoid saying precisely that Epicharmus used the word 7TapaUt'Tos? It

is wise to conclude that Pollux and the scholiast were summarising
inaccurately substantially the same material that Athenaeus quotes
at full length. Certainly, everything else that Pollux records about
parasites can be found at greater length in Athenaeus. And it is notable
that the statements of Pollux and the scholiast are not supported by
any citation.
The second obstacle to our previously mentioned assumption about
Alexis' priority occurs in Athenaeus' own chapter about parasites. At
6 •237A h e says, 'TOV OE\ OVOfLa'TOS
, ,
~ ~ ~,
'TOV 7TapaUt'TOV fLVTJfLOVEVEt
" A papws
\ EV
,
'YfLEvalcp 8t(x 'TOV'TWV (fr.16 Kock)·

, EU
OVK "0'"07TWS OVK
'l '
E 7TapaU£'TOS. .I.. '\
'fJtl\'Ta'TE·
~, '~\'.I.. '
o• 0
• T'
luxofLaxos 00£ 'TpE'fJWV UE roYXaVE£.

Directly before this lemma and fragment there appears in Athenaeus

the quotation from Eupolis' Kolakes in which the chorus of K6'\aKES
describe their characteristics (fr.159 Kock), and which Athenaeus has
cited as evidence for his statement that fifth-century parasites were
called K6'\aKES, not 7TapaUt'Tot. This juxtaposition of lemmata led
Casaubon and his successors lO to the belief that Araros, according to
Athenaeus, was the first comic poet to use the word 7TapaUt'Tos in its
new sense. But Athenaeus does not say precisely that; he says simply
that Araros used the word, in a play that cannot now be dated.
Athenaeus' statement about Araros, therefore, cannot fitly be used as
an argument for Araros' alleged priority over Alexis in the new use of
7TapaUt'Tos. Although Araros may have begun producing plays at least
a quarter of a century before Alexis,11 he was still writing and produc-
ing them at the time when Alexis produced his own play entitled
Parasitos (about which we shall have more to say in a moment). Of
that we can be sure. In the Parasitos Alexis (fr.179 Kock) refers to a
well that was ifroxp6'TEPOV ' Apap6'Tos; this withering remark implies
that Araros' comedies were still being produced in competition
against Alexis' own. On the basis of this evidence, therefore, it is quite
possible that the play from which Athenaeus quotes Araros' use of the
word 7TapaUt'Tos was written later than Alexis' Parasitos; that possibil-
10 E.g. Meineke, loc.cit.
11Araros may have produced a comedy (of Aristophanes' 7) in 388-7 B.C. (if. A. Pickard-
Cambridge, The Dramatic Festivals of Athens [Oxford 1953] 109); he certainly produced his
father's Kokalos and Aiolosikon soon after 388 (cf the hypothesis to Ar. Plut.). The Suda gives
the WIst Olympiad as the date of Araros' first production (of one of his own plays 7).
 W. GEOFFREY ARNOTT 165

ity will be transformed into near certainty when the remaining pieces
of evidence are inserted into the puzzle. And with the priority of
Alexis then established, it will occasion no surprise to observe the way
in which the word 7TapaaLTos is employed in the quoted fragment of
Araros-a way which suggests that its new general use was already
well established in colloquial speech.
If Alexis was the first comic writer to use 7I"apaaLTos in its later
sense, Carystius' statement becomes intelligible as a slightly garbled
version of the true fact.We may now advance a little further, on two
fronts. First, Carystius' statement appeared in a work entitled IIEp'i
o£OaaKaAtlVv. Carystius' subject, therefore, was the information to be
gleaned from didascalic records.1 2 It would be concerned to some con-
siderable extent with the recorded titles of plays. It seems reasonable
to suppose from this that Carystius' words have a further implication
-that Alexis' Parasitos was the first play to be produced with that
title,I3 antedating other homonymous plays, including one by Anti-
phanes.14 What then was the date of Alexis' Parasitos?We cannot be
sure. Alexis' first plays seem to date from shortly after 360 B.C.1S His
Parasitos, as we have seen, contained an allusion to Araros' continuing
dramatic activity. Although the date of Araros' death is unknown, it
is unlikely that his dramatic activity went on into the second half of
the fourth century.16 Webster's suggested dating of Alexis' Parasitos to
ca. 360-50 B.C. is thus hardly contestable. Partial confirmation of it is
given by a further fragment (fr.180 Kock) extant from the play which
refers to plato in terms implying that the philosopher was still
alive.
We may now move to our second point of advance, by examining
the opening lines of the main surviving fragment (fr.178 Kock) of
Alexis' Parasitos. They run as follows:
\ -
", ~,
Kal\OVat u aVTOV 7I"aV'TES Ot V€WT€PO£
~,

n apaa£TOV V7I"OKopWfLa.
I • ,

12 Cf. n.4.
13 Cf. Kock, CAF II.363f, and Kaibel, RE 1 (1894) 1470 s.v. ALEXIS 9. It would be foolish to
reject Carystius' statement (as Athenaeus does) as a contemptibly careless error. To judge
from Carystius' other remarks (cf. Jacoby, up.cit. [supra n.4]), he must have studied the
didascalic records with some care.
14 So first Meineke, op.cit. (supra n.9).

16 See the present writer's summary of the facts in RhM 102 (1959) 256 n.ll.

16 Cf. Webster, CQ N.s.2 (1952) 17f(the date of Alexis' Parasites), 23 (Araros' bottom date).
166 ALEXIS AND THE PARASITE'S NAME

Leo 17 was, I believe, the first to realise that these verses contained a
formula of introduction which is repeated elsewhere in Graeco-
Roman comedy. This same formula recurs in the opening words of
two Plautine parasites: in Menaechmi 77,
Iuuentus nomen fecit Peniculo mihi,
and in Captiui 69,
Iuuentus nomen indidit Scorto mihi. 18
The fragments of Greek comedy reveal two further parallels. These
come from Antiphanes' Progonoi (fr.195 Kock, vv.lO-11):
, \ _ , 'f , ~_

Kcn KaI1.0va/, I-" o/, VfEWTfEPOL

\:" ~ I 'P I
OLa TaVTa 71'aVTa ~K"f}7I'TOV,

and from Anaxippus' Keraunos (fr.3 Kock):

• ~ \ • __ \ I ~ ,/,. 1\
opw yap fEK 71'aI1.aLUTpas TWV -y""WV
, A' ~ ~ \1
71'poa£OVTa I-"OL ~aI-"L7I'7I'0v'-'1 TOVTOV I\EyfELS

t ' I
TOV 71'fETptvOV;
'\:"'t"
~
TOVTOV
U
t · O/,
,
,/,.!\
-y""0£ \ ~ I
Kal\Ova/, aOL

VVV(, 0(, aVOpfELaV .fi.fEpavvov.

All these passages use an identical formula for introducing a parasite

to the audience by his nickname. For all we know, this formula may
have been as standardised for the purpose as certain other dramatic
formulae were, like those employed in satyr plays and in new comedy
for the introduction of their respective choruses. The inventor of the
parasite formula mayor may not have been Alexis. The passage
quoted here from his Parasitos is, however, one of the two earliest of
the five parallel quotations. The fragment of Antiphanes may per-
haps have antedated that of Alexis, but there is simply no means of
dating the play from which the Antiphanes fragment is derived, nor
even for deciding whether its author was the elder of the two Anti-
phanes who produced comedies.
17 F. Leo, Plautinische Forschungen zur Kritik and Geschichte der Komildie l (Berlin 1912) 106.
Cf Brinkhoeff, op.cit. (supra n.2) 131.
18 The similarity between the two Plautine passages led nineteenth-century scholarship,
immersed as it was in its theories of post-Plautine retractatio, to feel that one of these two
'Plautine' instances of this formula was rather the work of a post-Plautine remanieur (e.g.
P. E. Sonnenburg, De Menaechmis Plautina retractata libel/us [Diss. Bonn 1882] 2; Ribbeck,
RhM 37 [1882] 532). It is in fact far more likely that both these passages come from the hand of
Plautus and were adapted from Greek models which contained the paraSite's introduction
formula in words basically similar to those of the Antiphanes fragment here quoted. Cf
especially Leo, op.cit. (supra n.17) 106; K. Abel, Die Plautusprologe (Diss. Frankfurt 1955) 53f.
 w. GEOFFREY ARNOTT 167

In all these passages-and this is the crucial point-the audience is

told the parasite's nickname, which had been given to him by the
group of young men with whom he had been associating. Sometimes
the parasite reveals this information himself; sometimes the inform-
ant is another person talking about the parasite. But in each case the
nickname is one that by a vivid image illustrates an aspect of the para-
site's character, such as his voracity. What Alexis did was to take the
stock character, which at that time was still known as the K6Aa~, and
to trick him out with the newfangled nickname napaaLTo~, a nomen
proprium here to be spelled with an initial capital for modern readers,
as Kaibel first saw. 19 Other comic poets used metaphors like 'Sponge'
and Thunderbolt' to symbolise their parasites' voracity; Alexis with
greater felicity chose his parasite's metaphorical nickname from the
world of religious ritual. Up to the moment when Alexis produced his
Parasitos, we may be sure, the term 1TapaaLTos was still reserved for
the priestly dignitary who received free meals in the sanctuary of his
god or hero. Alexis' originality lay in decking out his parasite with a
nickname that evoked for his audience a picture of priestly gormand-
isers, and especially doubtless those at Cynosarges in the service of
Heracles, the archetypal glutton and patron of comic parasites. 20 And
we may guess that what began as a colourful nickname for one stage
parasite so impressed the audience by its aptness that they began to
use it themselves as the mot juste for the type as a whole. Certainly
already by the middle of the fourth century there are signs that the
word 1TapaaLTo~ was now in normal use in its later, more general
sense.
This study is dedicated to a modest end, a minor but attractive de-
tail in the history of Greek comedy. If a small addition to our knowl-
edge is thereby achieved, it will have been achieved by the one means
possible, given the very limited and fragmentary material that the
historian of mid-fourth-century comedy has at his disposal. That
means is the careful study of the comic fragments of the period. As
K. J. Dover has written,21 "The attempt to trace through the frag-

18 In his edition of Athenaeus, ad loe. (10.4210). The nickname gives the play its title, as
does that of the similarly introduced parasite in Anaxippus' Keraunos.
20 Hence the words of the parasite in Plaut. Cure. 358 when he relates the story of his

gambling adventure, inuoco almam meam nutricem Herculem.

21 See p.1l8 of Dover's incisive, stimulating chapter in Fifty Years of Classical Scholarship,

ed. Platnauer1 (Oxford 1954).

168 ALEXIS AND THE PARASITE'S NAME

ments of the fourth-century comic poets the development of ele-

ments common to Old and New Comedy and the origins of elements
characteristic of New Comedy constitutes the true study of Middle
Comedy."22

UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS
January, 1968

IS This paper is an expanded and revised version of some work-notes that have engaged

my attention sporadically for several years. Cf BICS 6 (1959) 78f.